This talk will introduce Palestine Open Maps (palopenmaps.org), an online platform for interacting with historic and present-day maps of Palestine. It will include a discussion of how the project came about, the process by which the maps and associated data were digitized and made available, and a preview of some of the future plans for the platform.

Majd Al-Shihabi

Majd is a systems design engineer, currently applying the craft of systems thinking to the urban context, as a graduate student in the Urban Planning and Policy program at the American University of Beirut. He is interested in using of the open methodologies and free and open source software in order to create systemic change. He is currently the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellow with Creative Commons, Mozilla, and Wikimedia Foundations, where he is working on Palestine Open Maps, and the MASRAD:platform.

Hanane Yazigi

Hanane Yazigi is a geographer specialized in GIS and data management. After working in the private sector in France, she joined the Nahr al-Bared camp reconstruction project in Lebanon as a GIS specialist and data manager. She also worked in the mapping of Palestinian camps over the Middle East, as part of the UNRWA Infrastructure and Camp Improvement Program. Through her work, she aims to create data management systems to support community-based and advocacy projects.

Language: English (Q&A in Arabic and English)

Partners: Visualizing Palestine